Breaking the Adobe Chains

Being a longtime Adobe user (I sold my soul to them long ago), After Effects has been one of the apps in my tool belt for years. Even with growing competition in the marketplace from apps like Affinity that go up against Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign, I still felt trapped in the Adobe ecosystem.

Cavalry has been around for a bit, but the recent buzz around it has me paying attention now! With Canva's acquisition and turning the app free (all pro features no longer locked behind a paywall) like the Affinity suite, that's a good chunk of Adobe apps with good alternatives now. The number one thing keeping me in the Adobe bubble is Lightroom. Lr Classic is my go-to photo editing app on desktop, and Lightroom Mobile on my phone is just the best photo editing app I can get on my phone—that would be so hard to replace!

But I digress, let's take a look at how Cavalry compares to After Effects as someone new to the software. Does it have what I need to switch over entirely?

Powerful, Yet Cumbersome

After Effects is a super in-depth program with so much potential for making cool things. I know I've only scratched the surface in terms of it's potential, but it's general complexity keeps me from having fun in the building process. The program's architecture has really begun to feel outdated these past few years, especially with so many different motion design apps being written with modern architecture—they run leaner and faster with advanced systems that AE can't keep up with.

It's not a program that is part of my workflow a lot of the time, but I end up getting into it here and there for some odds and ends. I typically focus on typography based motion graphics, so I have a workflow that allows me to get the job done. One of my favourite pieces I made was intro and credits mographs for a group project back in university called "Insert Individuality Here". Unfortunately I don't have access to the full project anymore 😢 but I have the graphics I did for it—you can check it out below.

However, I've always felt AE to be a somewhat clunky experience. After years of using apps like Figma and Framer that allow you to build systems to maintain and enhance what you want to do, AE feels very manual and limited in this department.

I know there have been some pretty good updates to AE over the past couple years and it's nice to see it advance, but I can't help but feel I would play around and go further with a different app. Cavalry might just be that app after all this time!

Motion Graphics, but with Systems

Cavalry's take on motion graphics might just be what I have been looking for all these years. While After Effects relies on keyframing all elements to alter states and create animation, Cavalry uses a procedural system. This means that it focuses on building systems to manipulate variables to create motion. Even though there is a timeline, it's actually node-based! Seeing as I dipped my toes into Blender for the first time a couple months ago, I find the concept of a node-based system intriguing! I'm curious to see how that works for 2D motion graphics.

With a node-based platform to build systems for animation, my impression is a lot of the tools and techniques for building motion will feel more intuitive and responsive than After Effects. I know there will be areas where there is overlap in terms of what both platforms can achieve, but Cavalry's architecture allows for more automation. This is a key draw for me—I want to spend more time experimenting with what systems can do rather than manipulating all variables individually in a linear format.

For the sake of mentioning it, After Effects' functionality can be extended in many ways with a variety of plugins that allow for a wide range of super cool things to be made. My focus is mainly animating typography and simple graphics, so I am more concerned with the core fundamentals of how the system operates. Let me try to put it like this: Cavalry is like Figma with auto layout and components—you can build systems for automating responsive design. After Effects feels more like Indesign where even though there are some elements of systemization, for the most part you are arranging your layouts manually.

Maybe not the best way to describe it haha, so I found this video that has a good breakdown of how Cavalry operates:

What's Next?

I have also considered Rive for sometime, but it is fundamentally quite a different platform than Cavalry or After Effects. Essentially, Rive is built for interactive, realtime graphics for interfaces. I like the idea of that, but it's not built for motion graphics with the intent to export for video formats—that's more of what Cavalry is built for.

Next thing is for me to play around with Cavalry and see what how it feels to use. I'm sure it'll be a bit of a learning curve, but my curiosity is piqued. There is also a fresh wave of tutorials being uploaded to help learn the platform, so now is a good time to dive in and learn!